WRAPing around Adoptive Families Part 2
(Based on Focus on the Family's break out session at Summit VII)
Let me start off by telling you the perspective that I write this post from.
- • An orphan’s perspective. At age 12 my father left our family, leaving us fatherless and single orphans. My mother’s hope as she read us the Psalms, was that God would be our father. That He would care, comfort and provide everything we needed.
- • A social worker’s perspective. When I trusted Christ and began following him. He changed my heart to love children who had been abused, mistreated and abandoned. I have a BA in Social Work, completed all my internships in private and state run agencies that serve abused and neglected children. I worked for the state of Ohio for 4 years as a Protective Case Worker.
- • A friend’s perspective. I’ve had a few friends that I’ve seen adopt, either internationally or through foster care adoption. Each has their own story. Each family brings their strengths, weaknesses and heart to the children they have adopted. No story is the same.
- • A child of the Father’s perspective. In my 35 years of life, I’ve learned what is has meant to hope and wait only in the Lord, for the Lord alone to bring healing to dry bones and to deep pain and to renew life for His glory. For me, this healing has been found in what my church calls community:
- o Honest conversations about struggles
- o Coming alongside one another, pointing to our own helplessness and hopelessness without Christ, and His glorious rescue of us from ourselves.
- o Walking with one another no matter how ugly, how painful, how twisted and torn up our lives are until Jesus has brought healing and hope and a renewal of life that God uses for His purposes.
I tell you these things because, for one, I’m haven’t adopted, yet. I don’t speak of knowing what being an adoptive family is like first hand. I’m not a prayer warrior either. I know some women and men pray for what seems to me hours at a time. They are eloquent in their words and their heart is so pure as they sit at the feet of their Father. However, I tend to think of people throughout the day and say a short prayer for them, praying for specifics when I have them and asking God to meet their needs when I don’t. (Sometimes I wish I was that preacher's wife who wore an apron. Every time her children saw the apron over her head, they knew she was in prayer. She made her own prayer closet.)
As I discussed in my most recent post, adoptive families commit their lives and hearts to children who are in need of healing that only Jesus can bring. As they serve these children daily, they need a community of believers who are willing to WRAP around them with love and support. This is by no means a small task or one of short time spans. When children come home, the first few weeks and months are usually categorized as a honeymoon period, where children are often on their best behavior, not fully trusting of their new place and new caregivers. This, however, is typically when neighbors and friends offer the most support. Healthy attachment and bonding and healthy family living, on the other hand, can take up to 3 years some specialists believe. If this is the case, we as the church, need to take action in order to WRAP around and support these adoptive families for extended periods of time.
W stands for WRESTLE IN PRAYER
Wrestling requires strength, discipline, perseverance, patience, and fortitude. Shall I go on? I think we get the idea. As a high school student, I kept stats for the wrestling team. Their strength and perseverance often went over looked when examining the athletes of the school. They practiced long hours, disciplined their bodies with diet and exercise. I remember something that I always heard the coaches telling these young men was, "keep moving, don't stop!"
Wrestling in prayer for adoptive families is no different. As Christian families bring children into their home, reflecting the adoptive work of God the Father, in order to bring healing into little one's lives, there is a war going on.
Here’s a starting place that Focus on the Family offers, if you’re struggling with what to pray for. However, as you begin to live life with this family, I have every confidence that God will show you how to pray specifically for this family.
Pray for:
- • Strength and Patience
- • Grace and Mercy
- • God’s truth to be revealed to families amid the schemes and lies of the Enemy.
- • Spiritual eyes to see the truth behind their struggle and strength to exercise their faith and trust in their mighty God.
- • Ears attuned to the living God, who will walk them through their trials.
Pray for the Children:
- • That God would heal wounds of rejection, abandonment fear and mistrust.
- • That God’s love, which never fails, will cover the children in all that they do.
- • To know and believe that there is hope in Christ
- • To trust in and receive their new family’s love and desire to help them heal.
Take Action:
- • Seek out a group of believers who will commit to pray regularly.
- • Communicate to the family that you count it a privilege to pray and intercede on their behalf.
- • Know that your enthusiasm and initiative will help the family trust that they aren’t “bothering you” with a seemingly endless list of struggles and will allow them to have confidence in your prayer partnership
- • Ask the family for specific prayer requests and assure them those requests will be held in the strictest confidence.
- • PRAY…. OFTEN
- • Let the family know you’re praying for them regularly. For the struggling adoptive family, prayer will help move them toward wholeness and healing in Christ.
Here are some ideas to help get started:
- • Keep a journal of your prayers for the family.
- • Make a board of adoptive families or put the family’s picture on your refrigerator. Daily lift up this family in prayer. Make it part of your personal or family devotions or prayer time.
- • Just do it! Start today.
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